Heme

if it bleeds, it leads

You will have to read ahead to know what this is. It looks like a ribbon debris pile after young children have torn open their gifts on Christmas morning.

Tonight I was inspired by dinner and have decided to tell you an impossible story. Most diet stories are boring, so I will do my best. All of us (plants and animals) have a basic set of needs and that is to make the proteins needed to thrive. Proteins are made from amino acids strung together. It is that simple. So those of you out there (you know who you are) who imagine getting along on dog food or the grapefruit diet could work gotta remember us sapiens might need different amino acids than canines :) While I don’t want you to leave just yet, if you are new to my Substack, I think one of my old posts explained it all pretty well. A guy like me is calmed by knowing there are formulas and recipes baked into our DNA. Maybe some of you want a little more mystery. My steady readers might note that I cannot resist puns and the story also has a great one as its subtitle.

Nature's Cookbook

I must admit that the title tonight is the word I associate with dinner this evening. It will be explained in due time. About four years ago, before I was diagnosed as a Type-2 diabetic, I already recognized that I needed to exercise more and change what I was putting into my body. My plan was fully formulated before going to see my doctor. It would be at that checkup that I would find out I was a Type-2 diabetic. Months before the checkup, the mirror, and the soreness in my joints convinced me something needed to change.

So what was my plan? I have always been an avid reader and had enjoyed a couple of Michael Pollan’s books. I enjoyed both “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “This is Your Mind on Plants”. The clincher for me, however, was a book by Dr. Michael Greger titled “How Not to Die”. I will go down swinging in consideration that it might be my favorite title for a book ever! The shock value alone of having it on the table at a coffee shop is priceless. Sometimes people watching can be easy. The book serves as bait. I believe at some point, someone will see the lure and cannot resist biting the hook and inquiring about the book. I think my friend Mike S will like the analogy to his favorite past-time.

The book I believe changed the course of my life and certainly my health. I have been eating a mostly plant-based diet since and think it has been something I do not regret. It helps that I am not an absolutist. I do not believe in certainty but rather embrace probability and moderation. Be assured that if someone offers me meat or the occasion is special, I do not resist. To the largest extent, though, I have embraced the accessible science of eating a lot more plants than animals.

So let’s get down to the title today! For the doctors and nurses out there (or those that understand Latin), heme is the root of hemoglobin. Heme is an iron-containing compound that forms the non-protein part of hemoglobin. Heme is what eventually makes your medium rare steak retain its red or pinkish hue. For those of you in the well-done world, it eventually does change color. We all need iron in our diet but not an extreme amount. The diversity of nature on the planet has led to iron being both in heme and non-heme forms. In our bodies, heme is the precursor to hemoglobin. Heme exists in the flesh of meat, poultry, and seafood. Each of them is a good source of iron. There is no problem getting enough iron in your diet without eating meat (cabbage, spinach, nuts, and seeds for example). However, that doesn’t mean it satisfies the same way!

Time for bad memory. When I was a kid, it was still a thing for people to eat liver as a dinner main course. I HATED THE SMELL. This is an example of where modern farming practices have helped us out. Our propensity to force-feed corn to cattle during final fattening collapses liver function and hence the liver is sacrificed. For those of us who used to soldier through eating this as kids so we got iron in our diet, count me among the relieved. For those that want to eat a little liver, choose a grass-fed baby.

When I do enjoy beef, I prefer it medium rare. For me, that is the way it tastes best. Individual results vary. When you go to a restaurant and have a burger, they tend to overcook it. Because most ground beef is made in a factory setting, a good estimate is that a burger might contain beef from 25-1000 different animals when you take a bite depending upon the factory setting. This makes it particularly difficult to ensure good health outcomes so the solution is to cook the daylights out of ground beef!

Enter my newest friend The Impossible Burger. I buy them in eight packs at Costco and they are sized like a quarter pounder. Unlike a quarter pounder though, they do not shrink so much and I need not race through them before spoiling. What is WRONG with most every meat substitute burger? I do not mind eating the different options but I never think of them as a burger. The Impossible Burger is different and I think it is because of heme. I don’t overcook my burgers at home like they might in a restaurant. I always preferred them to be at least a bit pink.

I love a little bias in media especially when it is obvious. When Impossible was launched, organizations against the use of heme in GMO yeast coined the expression “unregulated food dye” to describe the heme. Unregulated food dye sounds pretty bad. My favorite example of that nowadays, especially here in Dairy Country is the desire to preclude referring to Almond Milk but rather mandate the label “nut juice”. I wonder if cow’s milk would have ever taken off if we called it lactation juice.

My Impossible burger bleeds and is juicy. That is a sweet parlor trick in my book. For some, it might seem a bit like Dr. Frankenstein. So how can that be? The food scientists at Impossible extracted heme (the bloody stuff) and crossed it with yeast they could culture and grow bringing the heme along for the ride! They add this to their plant-based burgers. For a guy like me, this is simply magic. I am sure that many of you are just saying wouldn’t it just be easier to eat a burger? Perhaps that is true.

One of the wonderful things about a given change in my eyes is the second-order and even third-order effects you never even thought about when you do something in the first place. I keep a sign on my refrigerator which fully captures why the changes I have made will be for life. It says “NOTHING TASTES AS GOOD AS FEELING GREAT”. To some that might mean I sacrifice taste. I don’t think so. Rather, I think I have developed some new, more sophisticated, and interesting food passions. The second-order effects have been I just feel better and hence other things are just easier and more enjoyable.

So what are the third-order results of changing my diet? While it may not matter to everyone, it is fun to think that when I have an Impossible Burger, beyond loving it and being satisfied, my meal requires 87% less water, results in 89% fewer greenhouse gases, and needs 96% less land for its production. If you are unsure that any of that matters, it certainly cannot hurt.

For the cattle ranchers out there, I am the first to admit the Impossible burger is not necessarily healthy but for me a nice treat in moderation.

The Poll & the Song

Tonight the poll is the “too” poll. I want to know what you think of my posts. Even if you’ve NEVER VOTED before, tonight let’s get out and vote!!! Let me have it and tell me how you feel!!!

I have been waiting to wrap up this tonight since I started! By the second sentence, I started playing tonight’s song in a loop. While a bit of poetic license, that is the author’s prerogative. Not all music translates well to live but this band manages.

What’s Next

My next post is titled “Common Sense”. While these links are NOT LIVE until they are formally posted, they will work thereafter. Patience is required :( While you may not end up with a noticeable dose of common sense, you will learn about what a coal roller is.